Nonprofits
Altering course
How to get employees to buy into change
By Patrick Mayock
Smart Business Los Angeles | July 2008
Page 1 of 2
Mary Leslie
President, Los Angeles Business Council
Mary Leslie is always
amused when someone points to the stagnant economy
as an argument against change.
If you hit rough waters, she
says, you would be foolish not
to alter course and steer toward
a clear horizon.
As president of the Los
Angeles Business Council,
Leslie tries to convey as much
when advocating for area business leaders on key issues that
impact their companies and
communities. On the issue of
sustainability, for example, she argues that companies that
embrace environmentally
friendly practices can cut operating costs, attract business
and encourage a healthy
lifestyle among employees.
But you’re not going to get
everyone on board just by laying out the benefits of change.
And sometimes, you just have
to let employees go, a lesson
that Leslie has learned throughout her professional career,
which includes positions as
deputy mayor of Los Angeles
and deputy director of the U.S.
Small Business Administration.
Smart Business spoke with the
versatile businesswoman about
how to reap the benefits of sustainability and how to get resisters
to buy in through training.
Embrace sustainability. It’s a competitive advantage now to
embrace sustainability as a concept. You can either choose
competitively to embrace this
phenomena and the reality of
limited resources, or you can
choose to ignore it, and then it
will be forced upon you.
The first thing is always education. We’ve gone to academia —
the major universities and institutions. We partnered with the
companies that were already
doing it. Then we went to government. Where are the leaders
in government on these issues?
Between academia, your colleagues who have to be knowledgeable and government, you
can pretty much find all your
answers
Second, you talk to your
employees. Figure out if this is
of value to your employees.
Then, you start looking at all
the things you do — all the
things you control: procurement practices, transportation
issues, telecommuting, work-related issues.
[If you practice sustainability],
you have happy employees and
potentially healthier employees.
A lot of research has shown in
sick buildings — buildings
where there are fumes coming
from the carpet that are toxic —
people who are sensitive and
highly allergic get sick.
The second [benefit] is a lot
of employees like the feeling of
being part of a solution. If you
engage in recycling and doing
things that are more sustainable to the environment overall, you have civic pride. You
feel like you’re bettering your
community.
Also, we know now from a
marketing promotional standpoint that it has become an
important criterion to a lot of
consumers and other businesses.
To many major municipalities,
you’re viewed as a better citizen if you have a thoughtful
policy and commitment to sustainability.
The other reason, if you own
buildings, is that you’ll actually
be more efficient and reduce
your costs. There’s a bottom line
to this also; you’ll save money.
Offer training to resisters. The
people who don’t want to
change resent it, and you get
push-back.
Listen to what the perceived
issue or problem is. Try to figure
out if that’s right or not or if
there’s any credibility to the
argument.
There might be some legitimacy to it. If there’s legitimacy to it,
often you might slow the way you
implement something. But in the end, once you make a commitment, you’ve got to do it. You
have to accept that you won’t
change some people’s minds.
You keep some people, you lose
others, and you get some new
people. It’s the great cycle.
One of the most legitimate reasons for resistance to change
within any business is potentially the fear that the person can’t
do whatever you’re asking them
to do. Nine times out of 10, if
you dig down, the reasons
somebody’s resisting you is that
they have a fear that they don’t
think they can do it.
I’m a big believer in training
people or retraining people so
that you’re not asking them to
do something that they can’t do.
Start with the goal. ‘This is the
goal. We all agree on the goal.’ If
they don’t agree on the goal,
then you’ve got a problem. But
assuming that we all agree on
the goal, you figure out who’s
going to have the aptitude
toward that, and then you
empower them to do it.
If they start getting frustrated
and they still can’t do it, then we
try to retrain and move people
to positions where they can do
well. Once you’ve exhausted all
of those things, then you help
the person move on.
